


For Any Dream Or Any Scheme

by NotThatLamia



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Daenerys won and married Jon, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gendry is an idiot in love, Mutual Pining, Other characters will show up in later chapters, POV Arya, POV Gendry, Post-Series, Sansa is Lady of Winterfell, Spoilers for Season 7, also Dickon is alive because of course, also his characterisation is a mixture of book!Gendry and new show!Gendry, my headcanons are on point, though I wrote this before 7x05, whoops! this just turned into a long-fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2018-12-16 14:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11830641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotThatLamia/pseuds/NotThatLamia
Summary: In the year 304 AC, Gendry Waters visited Winterfell for the first time. Having found a home in the North, he never goes back to the South after that. His only problem, Arya Stark doesn't seem to have noticed he's in love with her.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a collection of one-shots, and instead turned into a longfic with, like, plot and stuff. That's why I edited this prologue slightly in order to make it more coherent with the story I'm telling. The plan is for it to be 12 chapters plus an epilogue. I'll post a new chapter as soon as it's ready. In the meantime, enjoy!

 

Courtyard of Winterfell, 306 AC

 

 

Altogether, things were going pretty well for Arya Stark, sister to the Warden of the North and newly appointed chief of guards at Winterfell. In the years she’d spent at home since her return, and that first match with Brienne, she had kept training and sparring with anyone who knew how to correctly hold a sword. No one had ever come close to beating her, and there was a good chance no one ever would. For that specific reason, the effort she was putting into cornering Gendry might have felt excessive to anyone who knew how poor of a swordsman he was. However, the satisfaction Arya was feeling at having wiped away that insufferable smirk from his face was incomparable in and of itself. She recalled he had not been such an infuriating smartass in the past, and she actually wouldn’t have minded it if he had stayed the idiot she knew and now missed. Of course, it wasn’t as if he had proved to be all that bright lately. For instance, Arya had lost count of the times he had tried to deny the evidence that afternoon.

“ _Of course_ you were looking at Sansa,” she hissed at him, pointing Needle at his chest.

“I wasn’t! I swear!” he exclaimed.

“On your warhammer.”

Gendry frowned at her. “What, Arya?”

“Swear it on your warhammer,” she explained, moving aside while he attempted to lunge at her. Gendry almost lost his balance and went back to his crooked en garde position.

“I… alright, I was looking at her,” he finally admitted without much thought, more interested in trying to hold the position while straightening his back.

Arya swung Needle dangerously close to his throat. “I knew that!”

Gendry swore and ducked her following attack, trying to get away from her. “Can you seriously blame me? She’s probably one the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and I’m only a man.”

“You’re an idiot, that’s what you are,” she responded.

“Come on!”

“You know she’s betrothed, right? To a guy twice your size. He’ll punch you in the face if you only think about getting close to her.”

Gendry managed to reverse their positions. He finally engaged Arya’s sword with his, and blocked her against a column. “I don’t care if she’s betrothed. Besides,” he continued, “she’d leave the big guy and elope with me once I’ve shown her a couple of things I know.”

Arya tried to get him off of her while he snickered at her unsuccessful attempts. “You are disgusting,” she responded, driving an elbow into his stomach and slipping from his hold in one swift movement. “So, you’ve been looking at her non-stop since you got here, you just said she’s one of the most beautiful women you’ve ever seen, and you wouldn’t want to marry her?”

“You cannot seriously tell me you never had the hots for a guy you wouldn’t have wanted to marry anyway,” Gendry replied, a hint of annoyance at that point clear in his voice.

“What are you even talking about? I’m not the one who’s been behaving like a sleazy slug around her.”

“A sleazy slug.”

“A sleazy slug, exactly. You’ve been drooling around the castle since you’ve met her,” Arya said, while eventually disarming him with a turn of her wrist.

Gendry faced her, weaponless and with his fists firmly set on his hips. “And aren’t you a snarky mosquito?”

“I am not a mosquito.”

“You are,” he said, nodding quite exaggeratedly. “See? You have a Needle too.”

Arya sent him a dirty look and put her sword back in her scabbard. “Very funny,” she responded.

Gendry went to lift his sword from the ground and followed her to the armoury.

Arya sighed. “You should just admit I’m right,” she said, after they had left the courtyard.

Gendry laughed. “If there’s someone who’s right, that’s me.”

“I’m not a mosquito!”

“Well, I’m not a slug.”

“If you don’t want to marry Sansa who would you want to marry then?” she asked, voice lowered while a servant moved past them.

“I don’t want to marry,” he said after a short hesitation.

Arya scoffed at him. “Please.”

“I don’t. The one I want to marry once told me clearly she had no intention of marrying. Ever,” he continued, glaring at her eloquently. “So that’s it for me.”

Arya frowned. “That’s just stupid.”

Gendry shrugged. “I’m a big idiot, you already said that. Oh, and a slug. Come, let’s go look for your brother,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “He would go crazy if he’s back and doesn’t see you in the next two minutes.”

Arya rolled her eyes at Gendry, chuckling at his own dumb joke, and leaned on his shoulder. For no other reason than she was tired and he seemed very solid. It was just the reasonable thing to do.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to the Wiki, Ned Stark dies in the year 298 AC. Since I'm using both the novels and the show as a background for this fic, and a long time seems to have passed on the show since that moment, let's say Daenerys wins the war in 304 AC. Also Arya was born in 289 AC, while Gendry in 284 AC. This means they are respectively 15 and 20 years old when they are reunited, but most of the events will happen in 306 AC, when they are a little older.
> 
> Arya is like eighteen in the show by now and she’s still using Needle, so of course that’s her sword here too. (Jon probably noticed she has grown a lot, and he had a new one made for her, who knows!) 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. the olden days are over (we bid them adieu)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gendry POV
> 
> 304 AC: Gendry meets Arya at Winterfell.
> 
> 306 AC: a friend wants to discuss Gendry's feelings for Arya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Gosh, I need a beta. This one was not easy.)

 

 

 

East Gate of Winterfell, 304 AC

 

 

 

The day Gendry met Arya for the first time, it was summer in the South, he was a bastard and an orphan, and she was called Arry.

The day Gendry met Arya after what felt like a decade of absence, it was winter, and it was in the North. Some months before, he had embarked on a suicidal mission with her brother Jon, where he had seriously feared he was going to end up as an icicle on a crazy magical king’s roster. He still remembered the fall of Daenerys’ dragon, Jorah catching his hammer to hold the Wights back, his own desperate run to Eastwatch. The crows had helped him back on his feet after he had delivered the message. That had made him once again almost positive the war could be won. And then the Wall had crumbled, and the real struggle for peace had started, and the night and the cold had made nothing good seem possible anymore.

But that had been before. Now, the war was over, he was a Lord Gendry Baratheon - the title bestowed upon him by King Jon and Queen Daenerys after his efforts and successes under Jon’s command -, and he was going to be a guest of the King himself at his cousin’s castle, who also happened to be Warden of the North. He was older and wiser, he had been educated about the ways of speaking and behaving of the upper classes, and he had a brand new sword at his hip. Yet, none of this felt natural, and he feared it would never stop seeming foreign to him.

 

***

 

It was a bright day, with the clouds, ever present in winter high in the sky, hovering over them like a smooth blanket. The snow had stopped a few minutes before he crossed the East Gate of Winterfell with Jon, and Sansa came out of the Great Keep to welcome them. Gendry bowed and looked around barely containing his excitement. Because of the time he had needed to recover after the battle with the White Walkers, and his staying at the Wall for the whole duration of the war, he had never had the opportunity to visit the Stark’s estate. He was supposed to be used to castles and keeps by now, yet he wasn’t. Also, he still couldn’t completely shrug off the sensation that everything should have felt different now that he was a Lord. He should’ve found it natural to be around highborns, but the truth was - no matter how much he tried - he didn’t. He kept showing bravado and self-confidence then, having realised that was an easy way to conceal his discomfort. That first day at Winterfell, he noticed how effortlessly people bowed and behaved in the presence of Lady Stark, how many of the same approached them and kneeled before Jon, how others addressed respectful - yet inquisitive - glances at him; this was what surprised him the most, being the centre of attention after so many years of being invisible to most. He let Jon show him around the castle, learning the stories regarding each corridor and passage. Yet, with every door they opened and every step they climbed, one thought kept gnawing at his mind, as it had from the very first moment of his arrival. For, as much as he was enjoying the discovery of Winterfell, there was an element missing, the one he was more than anything else curious about: Arya Stark was nowhere to be seen.

Sansa and Jon were accompanying him through the Godswood, introducing him to their religion upon Gendry’s request, when she eventually showed up, on top of her horse, her hair unbound and swirling in the wind. Gendry had heard the rumble of hooves from afar, and noticed the figure of a rider on top of his horse. Even before he recognised her, he had known someone interesting was coming. And then she approached them, she stopped her horse, smiled at them and dismounted with ineffable grace, and, in a flash, Gendry knew why his father, Robert Baratheon, had been in love with Lyanna Stark to the point of self-destruction. Gendry had never met Lyanna, but he could hardly imagine how she could have made a more striking impression on Robert than the one Arya was now making on him. He could not take his eyes off of her, from her determinate steps and straight back. Only when she got closer, he realised how young she was, barely more than a child truly.

By the day Gendry Waters met Arya again, he had started introducing himself as a member of house Baratheon, the son of a former king, and he had been making an effort to behave as one. The moment he set eyes on her, a born lady in every gesture and word, he felt a deep uneasiness settle back in his bones, his mouth dry at the realisation that the years had not shortened the distance that had always existed between them, but that they had only made it wider. The girl before him would never grow up to be Sansa, she would never become a lady in the more superficial sense of the word, yet she would nonetheless end up sharing with her sister that same peculiar glow, the one she surely didn’t even know she already possessed. She hadn’t been conscious of that when they were younger, when they had been with the Brotherhood Without Banners and he had tried to make her see how different she was from him. She would hardly know about that now, with her sword and jerkin and battle horse. He feared not being able to get through to her, but there was really very little he could do to avoid that at that point. And yet, if there was one thing living as a bastard had taught Gendry, it was that the less his face showed distress, the more he could feign self-assurance and inspire trust in others. So he grinned and bowed sarcastically at her, all through thinking that, no matter what he did or who he became, he would never feel enough to deserve being a friend to Arya Stark.

Arya stopped in her track and she stared at him, looking him up and down. Her gaze settled on his eyes and a sudden smile brightened her face. She dropped the reins of her horse and rushed towards him, hugging him and knocking him out of his breath. Beside him, Jon chuckled and teased the two of them. “I don’t recall you greeting me with the same enthusiasm,” he said.

Arya shut him down by leaving Gendry’s hug before he could tighten his arms around her - much to his disappointment - and running at her brother. Jon picked her up and made her swirl, and Arya giggled and looked even younger than she was then.

She asked her brother about their trip, news about the Targaryen Queen. She wanted to know why they had needed that much time to come back home, and they talked and talked, and, although  Gendry was at times involved in the conversation, still he couldn’t shake off the impression that he was intruding.

 

***

 

Gendry couldn’t sleep. It was his first night in Winterfell and, as much as he knew he should take advantage of the room Sansa had had prepared for him, he was curious to see the castle, to walk along the walls and through the woods. He wanted to know how much this place looked like the Starks. If Jon’s somberness and Sansa’s strictness and Arya’s recklessness could all have come from the same walls and trees and air. He left his room and went outside, wearing the furs he had kept from his time at the wall. He had been strolling around the courtyard when a voice called his name from behind. Arya reached the spot where he was standing, with a fond close-lipped smile.

“You were unusually quiet at dinner,” she said.

“I’ve never been one to talk much,” he replied.

She looked him up and down, in the same way she had done in the godswood that afternoon. “I recalled you to be taller,” she said.

Gendry laughed. “You were ten when we first met. And you’re what, fourteen now? You’ve grown,” he said.

“Fifteen,” she corrected him, “in a fortnight,” she added.

She was still a girl after all, not at all the woman she had seemed on that horse, and in the dark, with just the feeble moonlight shining on her face, she looked very much the Arya he had met as a young girl. She was short, with her hair cut right above her shoulders and her hands small against the railing. However, her eyes seemed older in a way, betraying what she must have suffered, and her cheeks had almost completely lost the chubbiness of childhood.

“So what have you been up to in the last four years?” he asked.

“You first,” she responded, bumping her shoulder on his elbow, the highest spot she could comfortably reach without pulling herself on her toes. She had grown, yes, but she had always been short and she didn’t reach his shoulder even now.

Gendry told her of the Brotherhood Without Banners and the woods, of Stannis Baratheon and the Red Woman, of his escape from Dragonstone and his time as a fisherman. He told her of when he had decided to go back to Flea Bottom and to take up a job as a blacksmith again, working in disguise, growing a beard and wearing his hair cropped short.

He looked expectantly at Arya then, waiting for her story in return, instead she only said: “I was in Essos. I was trained as an assassin and now I’m back.”

Gendry accepted that, that she did not want to be recalled of what probably was the hardest part of her life, or that she just wasn’t ready to tell him about it yet. He had no urgence. Now that he had found her again, he had no intention of leaving her side again. Ever. She could take all the time she liked before talking to him. Yet, he couldn’t help freezing because of how nonchalant she sounded. She had become a different person, that was clear. But Gendry had changed too, and only time could have told if they had any possibility of meeting in the middle.

 

 

 

Winter Town of Winterfell, 306 AC

 

 

 

The last thing Gendry was expecting upon his arrival in Winterfell was to stumble upon people from his past. Of course, many had come and gone, all the knights and Beric Dondarrion and the Hound, but one surprisingly had stayed, and that had been no other than Hot Pie. Gendry remembered how little he had thought of him when they were younger, and he felt ashamed of that, since he had found out he sincerely liked the guy, now that he was getting to know him better. It wasn’t just that he had grown accustomed to his constant presence and his great bakery skills: in a short time, Hot Pie had genuinely become one of his closest friends. He was good at listening and at keeping Gendry on his feet. He was stable and honest and very keen on the life he had built for himself in the Winter Town of Winterfell. He had showed up little more than a year before with a girl at his side, the niece of his previous employers, looking for a place to settle and set up his own bakery. A couple of weeks later, his business was thriving and his bakery was overflowing with customers, attracted by the unusual shapes and exotic tastes of his bread. Gendry was truly glad to have found a friend in Hot Pie. However, he would’ve been even happier if the guy hadn’t taken up the perfectioning of his love life as his main goal in life. Or at least stopped pestering Gendry about it, exactly in the way he was doing that night.

“Have you thought about, like, telling her?” asked Hot Pie.

Gendry snorted. “Of course I have, Arthor,” he said, lingering on the last word with particular emphasis. Marna, the girl Hot Pie had come to Winterfell with - who was very beautiful, very smart, and had unexpectedly ended up marrying his business partner a couple of moon turns later -, found her husband’s nickname both genuinely endearing and extremely unfit for when she was trying to keep a straight face and discuss something serious with him. So she had taken up calling him Arthor, which Hot Pie hated but put up with, and Gendry loved because of how flustered his friend got when somebody called him by it.

Hot Pie shot him a dirty look. “I don’t get the problem,” he said. “Go to her and tell her: she’ll fuck you gloriously, and I’ll be hearing you parading your perfect marriage around in the following month.”

“She doesn’t want me, Hot Pie, that’s the problem,” said Gendry, curling his lips in annoyance.

“I-” Hot Pie started. Possibly taken aback at that, he pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment. It was a funny sight, Gendry had to admit. Marna had once affectionately pointed it out, and proceeded to kiss her husband straight on the lips. It had been a little too wet and noisy to not be upsetting for Gendry. He lived a much quieter life when his friends didn’t burden him with public displays of affection. “I disagree, Gendry,” he continued. “I really don’t think she’s that indifferent to you.”

“You haven’t seen her today,” Gendry pointed out. “I basically spent the whole week going after her sister and her reaction was that Sansa’s betrothed and I’m being an idiot.”

Hot Pie stared at him in disbelief. “And what I gather from your disappointment is that instead she was supposed to realise she has always been in love with you, right?” he asked, his words blatantly tainted with sarcasm.

“Yes.”

Hot Pie exploded in laughter before him. “That’s the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.”

Gendry threw his hands in the air in exasperation. “I have no idea what to do with her. And I’m not going to,” he paused, looking for a word that correctly expressed what he meant - talking about his feelings for Arya was never easy -, “fraud her into loving me,” he concluded.

“Of course not. That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean then?”

“I don’t know. Be more explicit with the way you feel about her,” he proposed, not for the first time that day.

“And how should I do that?”

“You have to woo her, idiot. You’re behaving like an idiotic older brother, not like a guy who has a crush on her,” Hot Pie explained.

“So what?” Gendry asked, more exasperated than purposely rude.

“So bring her flowers, tell her she looks beautiful, bring her to see the stars at night.”

Gendry smirked. “You know it’s Arya Stark we’re talking about, right?”

Hot Pie rolled his eyes. “Use your brain, what’s the Arya-version of bringing her flowers? Find it and do it,” he concluded.

Gendry sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good. Now, shall we leave this goddamn forge? Come drink a beer with me. It’ll clear your mind a bit.”

 

 

 

The Smoking Log, Winter Town of Winterfell, later that night

 

 

 

It turned out, Hot Pie was the one in need of a beer, after all.

“She’s sure, Gendry. She told me this morning and she was so excited I had to keep my mouth shut,” he spit out loud once they were seated at one of the tables. The place was always crowded now that winter had come and Winter Town provided no other entertainment than one old alehouse, and the noise of the voices around them made it almost impossible to hear each other. But Marna hated even the sight of the Smoking Log and would have never faced the cold weather to come looking for them there. They had to take that chance. “Aren’t you also excited, Hot Pie?”

“I am,” he said begrudgingly, “but I’m also terrified. I’m barely an adult myself, how am I going to take care of a child?”

“He’s going to turn out fine. You have a good life: your business is flourishing, you and your wife are the most tooth-achingly sweet couple I’ve ever have the disgrace of seeing, and Marna is sincerely way too hot for you. You’re going to lose your mind over him and Marna both, but it’ll be worth it,” Gendry explained.

Hot Pie sighed. “You are so wise.”

“I try,” Gendry replied. He looked around a bit and set his eyes on a slim figure moving around the tables. “Excuse me for just one second.”

Hot Pie followed his gaze and his eyebrows went up. He nodded in understanding, albeit with disapproval written all over his face. Gendry ignored him and stood up to follow the woman inside the kitchen.

She heard his steps and turned around. The sight of him startled her. “There you are,” she said.

Gendry was almost taken aback at the disappointment tainting her words. Almost, after all, he was under the impression he deserved it. “Tora, I’m sorry I disappeared,” he attempted.

She nodded. “I get it. We had an agreement.”

“We did,” he concurred, “but you deserved to be told anyway.”

Tora took a glass from the tray and started scrubbing it, all the while with her back to him. “I get she knows now?” she asked in a casual tone.

“She doesn’t, but that’s why I never came back after the last time. I can’t do this to you,” he explained, putting every bit of kindness he could in his tone, hoping this would soften the blow coming with the message he was delivering. “And her,” he added in an afterthought.

Tora turned around and faced him. “You never did anything to me. We had an agreement,” she repeated, almost snarkily.

Gendry rolled his eyes. “Stop saying that,” he replied. “It makes it look as if there was never anything between us.”

Tora rinsed her hands and stepped closer to him. She hesitated slightly before bringing a hand to his face to cup his cheek. Gendry let his head weigh on it.

“There was,” she said, stroking his cheek with her thumb. “But there was also an understanding,” she added, not unkindly.

Gendry’s shoulders dropped. “I feel terrible,” he mumbled.

Tora smiled. “You very well should,” she agreed.

Gendry took her hands gently in his and stared at them, while he asked: “Will you be fine?”

She laughed. “No matter what your thoughts were on the matter, my life never centered exclusively around you,” she said.

Gendry smiled back at her. “I will miss you, though,” he said.

Tora stood on her tiptoes and placed a kiss at the corner of his mouth. “I will miss you too,” she replied. “Go get her. She is a lucky girl,” she added softly, her voice broken.

Gendry felt tears prickle at the corner of his eyes, parallelled by the ones glinting in hers, but stepped back anyway. “Goodbye,” he said, dropping her hands.

And with that, he turned around and left.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this chapter after months, but you all should know the whole fic is basically written. I take way to much time re-writing and editing everything, though. And I've been writing a lot of academical stuff in the meantime, so it's not been easy to go back to my fics. I'll try my best!
> 
> The fic is 12 chapters long + an epilogue. In each chapter there’ll be a flashback or some backstory first, and the continuation of the story which began in the prologue (when the mutual pining happens) later.
> 
> Oh, and I should also say the rating will change soon because of a later chapter.
> 
> Next chapter will be an Arya POV. In the meantime, if you'd like to yell at me, you can also find me on tumblr @ notthatlamia!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
